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I plan on buying an MSI MoBo, MSI K9AGM2-FIH, which has the ATI Radeon X1250 IGP, and I want to know, how well is it working with Linux?

I have it running here as a HTPC. 2D is running good, TV-OUT is fine. There is no video acceleration, so I use OpenGL instead which doesn't hurt picture quality.

Is its (3D) performance similar to its Windows one? (under the latest driver) And would its 690G chipset from AMD cause any trouble?

I don't know how well it performs under Windows, but 3D performance is ok. I can run World of Padman in 1024x768 with all settings set to above-medium (but not highest) and it runs with about 25 to 50 FPS. This is in a box with a Athlon64 X2 3800+ and 1GB of memory. Main problem is that the mem is only single channel at the moment, which really hurts IGP performance.

I have it running here as a HTPC. 2D is running good, TV-OUT is fine. There is no video acceleration, so I use OpenGL instead which doesn't hurt picture quality.

I don't know how well it performs under Windows, but 3D performance is ok. I can run World of Padman in 1024x768 with all settings set to above-medium (but not highest) and it runs with about 25 to 50 FPS. This is in a box with a Athlon64 X2 3800+ and 1GB of memory. Main problem is that the mem is only single channel at the moment, which really hurts IGP performance.

you know, i wouldnt mind running alpha/beta quality software on my machine if it would help amd/ati iron out the kinks ..

They should realize that although we expect the same kind of quality everyone else does, most users of open source software dont usually mind testing out other people's work to help out. Now, with closed source drivers we wont be able to do anything about the actual code, but i dont mind handing out bug reports if it helps amd deliver a fine, performant aiglx enabled driver.

you know, i wouldnt mind running alpha/beta quality software on my machine if it would help amd/ati iron out the kinks ..

They should realize that although we expect the same kind of quality everyone else does, most users of open source software dont usually mind testing out other people's work to help out. Now, with closed source drivers we wont be able to do anything about the actual code, but i dont mind handing out bug reports if it helps amd deliver a fine, performant aiglx enabled driver.

Every company, may it be nVidia, Codeweavers or AMD, is running beta programs. If you want to help improving the fglrx driver, I am sure you'll find a way.

I know what an NDA is, the point of my question was "What do they have to gain by enforcing the NDAs so strictly". If Michael didn't censor the fglrx and opengl version numbers in his screen shots, would people buy less ATI cards?

Also, if they have beta code that works somewhat, IMHO they should post nightly beta releases (with whatever huge disclaimer necessary) so people could see for themselves that something is happening. Right now there's absolutely nothing that indicates ATI cards will ever get AIGLX support.

Also, if they have beta code that works somewhat, IMHO they should post nightly beta releases (with whatever huge disclaimer necessary) so people could see for themselves that something is happening. Right now there's absolutely nothing that indicates ATI cards will ever get AIGLX support.

While small, that all requires extra resources by AMD... They have a hard enough time right now just sanitizing specifications as they only have two people at times working on the specs, etc.

No matter how huge of a disclaimer they have, they no matter what have some level of responsibility and support by just publishing the driver in the public domain.

I dont see any need for nightly builds of the proprietary driver. I do however think it would be good if there was an open beta phase, when possible. As an Example and without any knowledge of how there current betas work.
8.43 is released on 1/11/07.
8.44 (early) Closed Beta is released 10/11/07 with first set of bug reporting.
8.44 Open Beta is released 20/11/07 allows testing on a greater scale for any major issues that may occur on further testing.
8.44 Final released 1/12/07.

While the time frame for open beta to final is short, hopefully if any major issues that occur at the start of the beta for certain card users / distribution users can be resolved if time permits the changes needed.

Anyway just my thoughts of how ATI could change there beta program, which im sure they wont.

Well, AMD releases so called hotfix Windows drivers, often after 2 weeks of a new WHQL release. These releases are somewhere "Open Betas" but without any help for AMD. They could do the same for Linux, but the Linux drivers have too less developers that it would be so important unless there's a new Kernel or Xorg (where a hotfix would be excellent).

Don't forget the amount of work that gets in an open beta release. The people at AMD/ATI need a lot of time working through the various bug reports of people, like me, who don't know anything about driver development.
By issuing only a closed beta release they make sure that only people who know at least a considerable bit about what they're doing submit bug reports during beta. Therefore it's less time consuming to sort all the good bug reports from the bad and decide the course of action to resolve these bugs.

As usually all ATI drivers share the same problems + some newly introduced ones I would not think that they don't know the bugs, but don't how to fix em - like that Modeline bug which never was fixed but known for about a year. Also the usual statement to support new X/kernel versions only AFTER final releases of em is well known, that leads to a 1-2 month delay till you get the real fix - just by the way they handle this. NV needed some weeks for Xorg 7.3, but at the same time they added support for upcoming kernel 2.6.23. Do you think ATI does not know that this kernel will be out soon? Nobody else in the Linux field would expect an ABI change when there is RC9, but you can already "hear" in your virtual ear that this will be the "excuse" for not adding support for it. Sorry, but this is definitely a wrong way to develop drivers that should work on every current Linux system without forcing users to patch the drivers on their own - NV releases at least some OFFICIAL patches if needed to fix issues when they don't update the driver itself. ATI users don't have that possibility...